Four Starbiter Lookalikes
Esticus was only a step away. I planted my foot on his tail, just below the scoop so he could not swing it. Then I grabbed him by the wrists and heaved him up as high as I could lift. Since I was so much taller, he ended up dangling by his arms, feet off the ground.
In this position, I did not have to worry about his claws or tail, and I held him out far enough that he could not reach me with his mandibles. That only left his feet… and with haunches like a rabbit, he was well built for kicking at things behind his back, but not so good for attacking persons in front of him. Anyway, he seemed too scared to put up a fight — his mandibles trembled, his eyelids fluttered, and he made anxious grunts in his throat.
I too may have uttered the occasional grunt. A creature of Esticus’s size may not be as heavy as a human, but it took great strength to hold him hanging in that position. There was no chance of keeping him suspended for more than a minute… but with luck, that was all the time I needed.
"Let Festina go!" I shouted into his face. "Whatever you are doing, stop at once."
Esticus did not answer. Neither did Immu. As for Festina, she was clutching her throat and making horrible wheezing sounds. It had to be the work of the missing translation clouds… for Immu’s cloud had disappeared too. I could imagine billions of translation nanites crowding inside my friend, sealing off her windpipe, clotting up her lungs. She was still on her feet, having staggered back to get away from Immu’s tail; but her face was turning dark with blood, and her eyes were bulging. With the hand that was not at her throat, she raised her stun-pistol and fired at Immu.
Immu gave a raspy laugh. "I told you. Those guns don’t work on us."
"Let Festina go!" I yelled at the two Shaddill. "Perhaps the gun cannot hurt you, but I surely can." I gave Esticus a shake and he gasped out a hiss.
"You’re the one who should let go," Immu said, speaking in my own language. Without the translation cloud, her voice was nothing more than a whisper. "We have enough nanites to choke you too."
"Do not try," I said. "If I feel the smallest tickle in my throat, Esticus will regret it." At that, Esticus wriggled and squirmed, trying to slip from my grip. He could not. The foolish Shaddill had made me stronger than they were themselves.
Immu got to her feet, her tail lashing angrily around her haunches. I turned quickly, placing Esticus between me and his wife as a protective shield.
"Lajoolie!" I shouted. "Sergeant Aarhus! Nimbus and Uclod! Could you please lend me assistance?"
"Save your breath," Immu said in her whispery voice. "Did you think we’d be stupid enough not to deal with them?"
She clapped her hands: a sharp smack with an after-clatter of claws clicking against each other. It was obviously a signal of some kind; I looked around quickly, wondering if I would be attacked by robots or nanites. But the attack was not aimed at me… and by all evidence, the attack had taken place some minutes earlier, so quietly I had not noticed it.
Four stringy blobs rolled in through the door. They looked like human-sized versions of baby Starbiter — gray threads sunk into damp goop that glistened wetly in the dim light. In this case, however, the goop was not white but murkily clear… making it possible to see dark silhouettes embedded in the heart of the blobs. I had no trouble identifying the silhouettes by their shape and size. Lajoolie. Sergeant Aarhus. Uclod. The last blob had no figure visible inside, but I did not doubt it contained Nimbus and his child.
Somehow my friends had been taken by surprise. They had been encased in guck, caught like mosquitoes landing on pine gum. If they were trying to struggle free, I could not see any evidence of it — they seemed frozen in place, helplessly stuck as the blobs rolled across the floor and stopped in a ragged line behind Immu’s back.
"You see?" Immu said. "You’re all alone." She glanced toward Festina. My friend had toppled onto her knees and was doubled over now, her head almost touching the floor. Her whole face was approaching the port-wine color of the birthmark on her cheek.
"I won’t let your precious friend die," Immu told me in a raspy smirk. "I’d never do anything so non-sentient. But I’ll let her pass out before I call off the nanites in her throat. And," Immu continued, raising the sharp end of her tail above Festina’s head, "once she’s unconscious, I won’t have trouble cutting off her ears… lopping a few fingers… scooping out an eye… unless you put Esticus down. As long as I don’t actually kill this human, the League of Peoples won’t stop me."
"Then the League will not stop me," I said, "from ripping off parts of Esticus… which I shall certainly do if you hurt Festina." I gave the Shaddill in my arms another fierce shake.
"Not so fast," Immu snapped. "You don’t know a thing about our anatomy. You don’t know what’s safe to rip off and what could be lethal. For all you know, Esticus might the from losing a single claw."
"I do not believe he could be so frail."
"But you don’t know," Immu replied. "As for me, I’m thoroughly familiar with Homo sapiens physiology." She swung her tail idly toward Festina; my friend grabbed at it weakly but missed. "I know what will and won’t cause fatal bleeding," Immu continued. "I know which human body parts are expendable. But if you so much as break one of Esticus’s bones without knowing what you’re doing,that’s callous disregard for the possibility you might do lethal damage. Not a sentient attitude, Oar — the League will kill you on the spot."
"For breaking a finger? When you are threatening to pluck out Festina’s eye?"
"I’m threatening to do something I know won’t kill her. You, on the other hand, would be taking a blind risk with someone else’s life. That is definitely non-sentient. Let my mate go before you get hurt."
Esticus whispered, "Yes, please, yes, please, yes, please…"
I stared at the whimpering beetle as he dangled in front of me… and suddenly I became furious. For five thousand years, these cowardly creatures had not hesitated to violate entire cultures, to kidnap and imprison individuals who interfered with their plans, to coerce whole species into insipid decadence, and to give people Tired Brains — yet Immu dared suggest I should be executed if I snapped off somebody’s claw? My best friend was choking in front of me. My other friends were enveloped in gooey string, and who knew how well they could breathe inside those cocoons? The Shaddills wished to jelly me against my will, rather than take the slightest personal risk in pursuit of transcendence; yet I was the wicked one who might be punished?
Enough of this nonsense. I would command the Shaddill to remove the nanites from Festina’s windpipe, to release my friends and leave us alone… or else I would grab Esticus’s trembling mandibles and rip them right off his face. It was ridiculous for Immu to claim she could hurt my friends with impunity, but the League would not permit me to hit back.
Slowly, I lowered Esticus until his feet touched the ground. Perhaps Immu thought I was preparing to let her husband go… but in my mind’s eye, I pictured punching the little brown Shaddill in the nose, smashing the mandibles all around his muzzle, hearing the crack of bones as they shattered under my fist.
And yet… and yet…
How did I know I would not kill the hateful fur-beetle? Perhaps smashing his mandibles would do lethal damage. And for all that I was blazing with righteous indignation, I did not wish to murder shaky wee Esticus. The League would then murder me… and I did not care to die so stupidly.
Was there anything I could do to vent my wrath, yet not kill a weak Shaddill one?
Yes.
Changing my grip on Esticus’s wrists, I whirled him around by the arms and slung him into the fountain.
Splash
I did not throw the furry alien, but swung him like an ax: holding his arms and sweeping him across the pool’s surface so that he scooped up a great sloosh of honey that flew in a frothy tsunami. It was fortunate I did not get any splashes on me… but I was wearing my Explorer jacket, and the few drops of spatter that came my way hit fabric instead of skin.
Neither Immu nor Esticus fared so luckily. I had aimed the husband perfectly at the wife — the thick wave of crimson scooped up by Esticus hit Immu full in the face, drenching her head and all down her front. She squealed in terror and jumped backward, trying to wipe honey from her fur; she squealed again when she realized she now had the liquid on her hands. Her eyes bulged horrified as she stared at her fingers… for as she watched, one of her claws melted into soft purple and fell plop to the floor.
Esticus was no better. From the waist down, he was soaked in honey; and his pelt had begun to bubble, sloughing off fur as each little hair dissolved into goo. The skin underneath was already turning puffy. I let him fall to the floor and leapt back to make sure I did not get the honey on me. He staggered to his feet almost immediately… but the dirt where he had landed was covered with a glossy slick of purple and the part of his body that had touched the ground looked like its hair and skin had been shaved off clean.
Howling, "Help me!" he turned to Immu; but his wife was in no condition to help anyone. Her entire head was turning purple — all but those bulging eyes, because she had blinked them shut just before the Blood Honey struck her. Now her eyelids were gone, turned into goo that slid off her eyeballs and slurped into the general morass of her face. Her cheeks dripped onto her chest; her forehead was slumping into a great overhanging brow that would soon flop down and cover those raw exposed eyes.
A raspy laugh gurgled in her throat. "All right," she whispered to Esticus, "I’ll help you."
She reached toward him and gave his hand a squeeze. Though her head had turned to slime, her arms and legs were still mostly intact; she let go of Esticus’s hand, scooped him off the floor, and held him to her disintegrating chest. The motion shook dollops of jelly loose from Esticus’s legs, laying bare the bone underneath. Then Immu flexed her powerful haunches for one last great leap.
Husband and wife plunged together into the pool.
The Cost Of Salvation
The Shaddill’s jump did not take me completely by surprise — I had enough time to hurl myself backward out of range of their splash. Festina was far enough removed too, and protected by her uniform; patches of the gray cloth looked wet and glossy, but no splashing honey landed on her exposed head or hands.
There was only one problem: Festina was still choking. Even as I watched, her body went limp and tumbled clumsily into the dirt.
"Villains!" I screamed at the Shaddill, now decomposing in the fountain. They were totally immersed, and totally coated with purple, but I screamed at them anyway. "Call off your nanites, you poop-heads! Get them out of Festina’s windpipe!"
No nano cloud emerged from my friend. I could see no sign of her breathing.
"Stick-ship!" I yelled in Shaddill-ese. "Tell the nanites to leave my friend! This is an order — obey me!"
No response. I ran to Festina and knelt beside her. When I opened her mouth, a gold nanite glow shone from the depths of her throat… but the actual blockage was too far down to see, let alone to reach with my finger. Anyway, how could I remove the obstruction if it was made of billions of tiny robots, all following orders to strangle my friend? If I did manage to sweep some away, they would simply rush back into place.
I needed a means to fight the nanites directly. I needed nanites of my own.
"Nimbus," I said aloud.
Leaping to my feet, I rushed to the webby blobs that held our companions. With so much honey splashing around, the blobs had been struck with spatters… and wherever the honey had touched, the webby surface had dissolved into jelly. Praise to the Hallowed Ones! I thought: the blobs must be made of living matter, susceptible to Blood Honey. Now all I needed was a tool…
Festina’s stun-pistol lay on the floor a short distance behind me — she had dropped it when she saw it did not work on the Shaddill. I grabbed it and poked the metal muzzle into one of the purple patches on Nimbus’s cocoon. With a twist of the wrist, I flicked the jelly off the gooey surface; the result was a small hole where the jelly had been. Even better, the gun’s metal barrel did not seem affected by contact with honey… which meant I could use it to dig into the blob that held Nimbus prisoner.
For Festina’s sake, I hoped I could do it quickly.
Wrapping my jacket around my hands and arms to avoid getting stuck on the blob’s gluey surface, I pushed the cocoon holding Nimbus to the edge of the fountain. Once I had the cocoon in position, I dipped the pistol’s mouth into the basin, got it wet with red liquid, then prodded it into the blob’s exterior. The sheen of honey on the gun’s barrel ate into goopy webbing, turning it to a gel which could then be flicked away. This was not a speedy process — the honey did not corrode the goo nearly as fast as I wished — but little by little I deepened a hole into the blob, telling myself all the while I would soon free Nimbus.
A part of me realized this might not be true. If Nimbus’s little misty bits were all trapped separately, like millions of bubbles in a solid block of ice, I could never carve them loose in time to save Festina. But if there was one big chamber in the middle, a single holding area like an egg, and all I had to do was pierce the shell to let the cloud man out…
A great gust of mist shot out from the hole, straight into my face. It felt cool and kindly, a fog of salvation. "Nimbus!" I cried. "There are nanites down Festina’s throat! You must clear them out and start her breathing again."
I expected the cloud man’s mist to swoop immediately toward Festina; but it only wisped around and around, swirling close to me, then shying away again. "Clear them out?" Nimbus whispered. "How? I’m not designed for fighting other nanites. I couldn’t begin to take on warrior nano…"
"These nanites are not warriors, you foolish cloud, they are just translator things. But they will kill Festina unless you take action."
"It’s not that easy, Oar!" Mist was all around me, wreathing my head, brushing my cheek. "My only way to stop the nanites is smashing my particles against them. High-speed collisions that will hurt me just as much as the nano."
"Are you such a coward that you fear a little pain?"
"I’m not talking about pain; I’m talking about mutual destruction."
"And I am talking about the death of my friend!" I swept my hands at him viciously, trying to push himaway from me. "You are a healer, are you not? Festina needs healing. That is all you have to think about."
"No, Oar. I also have to think about my daughter. And…" His mist shuddered. "…and my owner. My owner’s wishes."
"Your owner? Uclod would wish you to help Festina!"
"I told you, Uclod isn’t my owner — he’s just renting me. I’m the property of… of someone who doesn’t know or care about your friend Festina, and who wouldn’t want me to risk myself on her behalf." The mist-man shuddered again. "I’m a valuable investment," he said bitterly. "I have strict orders not to endanger myself on ‘unprofitable moral whims.’ "
"And you listen to such orders?"
"Oar," he said. "I told you when I met you, obedience is hard-wired into my genes. I despise it, but I don’t have a choice. It’s how I was built."
I stared at him a moment, then closed my eyes. "I will tell you a thing, Nimbus. We are all built in ways we would change if we could — we are flawed or damaged or broken by forces beyond our control. In the end, we are limited creatures who cannot exceed our boundaries." I opened my eyes again, seeing only mist. "But here is the other half of the truth: our boundaries are never where we think they are. Sometimes we think we are the most wonderful person in the world, then find we are nothing special; sometimes we think we are too weak to do a great deed, then find we are stronger than we believe." I took a deep breath. "Please save Festina, Nimbus. You do not have to be so hard-wired and obedient. Please save her, and prove you are more than you think."
For a moment, he did not answer. His mist shimmered… as if it were glistening in some light beyond the dimness of that dusky room. Then his voice murmured in my ear, "All right. I’ll do what I can."
He swept around me one last time, brushing tenderly against my neck. "My daughter is still inside the web. Get her out and keep her safe."
"I will," I promised.
He swirled away, streaming across the room as fast as an eagle, not slowing down as he flew straight into Festina’s face. The cloud man disappeared up Festina’s nose as he had once before… only this time I was not scandalized by his effrontery, but overjoyed he was going to save her. He would fly down her throat to fight the gold nanites…
And who would win the battle? Who would survive?
I did not know.
Carefully, because I had nothing else to do, I widened the hole into the cocoon that had held Nimbus prisoner. The hole was only three fingers across, the breadth of the pistol’s barrel. Smearing more and more honey into the gap, I increased the breach in the goo-ball until I could stick my arm through safely, with no risk of touching the damp jelly sides.
All that time, I forced myself not to look in Festina’s direction. Nimbus would succeed; of course he would. There was no other way to save my friend, so the universe was compelled to let Nimbus triumph.I merely had to get Starbiter out of the blob; the moment I managed that, Nimbus would emerge from my friend’s mouth and say, "Oar, everything is all right now."
Even before I reached into the blob, I had caught sight of Starbiter. She lay amongst the webbing so tranquilly, I wondered if perhaps she thought she had returned to her mother’s womb. But she did not protest as I wrapped my fingers gently around her and drew her out into the world. I had long since discarded my jacket, for fear of the patches where honey had turned the cloth to gel… so I cradled the little Zarett tight to my chest, right where she could hear my heart beating.
"Now, Nimbus," I said. "Now you will come out."
For many long seconds, nothing happened. Then a vicious spasm shook Festina’s body, and she gave a gagging cough. It was the sound of a human about to vomit; I sped across the room and rolled Festina onto her side just as she gagged again. A spew of yellow phlegm erupted from deep within her, spattering onto the ground. It poured out in streams, puddling on top of the soil. I put an arm around her to hold her steady… and I knelt there, supporting Festina with one hand and baby Starbiter with the other.
"Come out now, Nimbus," I whispered as Festina took a ragged breath. "Your job is done. You have vanquished the enemy. Come out."
But he did not come out. He did not appear and he did not appear and he did not appear… until I realized he had already come out and I just did not recognize him. The spew on the ground was comprised half of golden nanites and half of Nimbus.
Both halves were dead.
I stared at the puddle as it slowly seeped into the dirt. Then I lowered my face to my friend’s shoulder and wept.
True Freedom
"Well, well, well," said a familiar nasal voice, "three cheers for the visiting team! At the closing whistle, the score is Oar 2, Shaddill nothing."
I lifted my head. The Pollisand stood perched on the rim of the basin, looking down at the purple lumps that had once been Immu and Esticus. A creature his size could not possibly balance on the narrow basin wall, but he was there anyway; he pranced a few steps in a rhinoceroid victory dance, then jumped to the floor. "How are you lovely ladies doing?"
"We are splendid," I answered, "no thanks to you. But Nimbus is doing most poorly; you must bring him back to life."
Deep in the Pollisand’s throat, his eyes grew dim. "Can’t do that," he said. "Sorry."
"You can do that," I replied. "You have told me repeatedly how clever you are. You could bring Nimbus back just as you did for me; you must do it now."
"No, I must not," the Pollisand said… and there was something steely in his voice, something much different from the grating tone he usually affected. "Your friend Nimbus made a choice, Oar: a conscious decision to be more than a slave to some absentee owner, even though he knew it might cost him his life. I do not tamper with the results of such decisions."
"But you saved me… when I consciously made a decision to fall eighty stories!"
"You didn’t believe you would die. You didn’t believe you could die. When you grabbed your enemy and jumped out that window, you thought he would die but you’d be just fine; hardly a deliberate sacrifice like Nimbus."
The Pollisand walked over to the slightly muddy patch beside Festina — all that was left of the cloud man. He put out his great clumsy foot and held it over the soil as if he intended to touch the wetness… but then he stepped back and planted his toes on solid ground.
"Nimbus knew he wasn’t designed for battle," the Pollisand said. "As he told you, his only method of fighting was to smash his component cells into the nanites over and over again, until both sides were battered into oblivion. I refuse to trivialize Nimbus’s sacrifice by ‘fixing’ things as if his decision never happened."
"But…"
Festina placed a weak hand on my arm. "You aren’t going to win the argument," she said. With a thoughtful expression, she gazed at the Pollisand. "You care about decisions, don’t you? Good decisions, bad decisions… you care about them a lot."
"Deliberate choices are the only sacred things in the universe. Everything else is just hydrogen." He turned to me. "By the way, kiddo, you finally made an honest-to-god life-or-death choice yourself: when you decided not to rough up Esticus. If you’d broken so much as the little bastard’s finger, the League of Peoples would have put you down like a dog."
"Breaking his finger would have killed him?"
"Hell, no," the Pollisand answered with a snort. "The Shaddill are just as indestructible as you are — they’d probably survive if you crammed H-bombs down their throats. Furthermore, if you’d just gone ahead and smashed Esticus in the face as soon as you thought of it, the League wouldn’t have minded that either… but then, Immu got to blathering that horseshit about, ‘Hey, you never know,’ and even worse, you got to thinking, ‘What happens if she’s right?’ That’s when you were in trouble: the only time you’ve truly been in danger since we first met. If you genuinely recognized the risks and decided to pummel Esticus anyway… well, as Immu said, that really would have been non-sentient. With the League, it’s never the actual result that counts; it’s what goes through your head."
His eyes glimmered in the hollows of his neck. As I gazed at him, a disturbing thought crossed my mind. "If I had made the wrong decision at that time — if the League slew me for non-sentience — you would have let me stay dead. Because then my death would have been a result of my own decision. Correct?"
"Correct." The Pollisand’s voice sounded amused.
"But if I had died for any other reason — not as the consequence of a personal decision but through accident or someone else’s malice — you would have been willing to heal me. That is correct too, yes?"
"To some extent." His eyes glimmered more brightly. "So when you told me hours ago," I said, "there was a teeny-tiny-eensy-weensy chance I might get killed, you did not mean the Shaddill might slay me. You meant I might make a bad decision, and you would not save me from the results." I glared at him fiercely. "Did you foresee everything? Did you know it would come down to me deciding whether or not to punch Esticus in the nose?"
"Hey," he said, "I keep telling you: I’m a fucking alien mastermind."
"Or," said Festina, "a complete fraud who takes credit for being a lot more omniscient than he really is. You took damned good care to keep your leathery white ass out of sight till the Shaddill were gone. Could it be you were afraid to tangle with them directly?"
"Ah, yes," said the Pollisand in an even more nasal voice than usual. "A god or a fraud? Am I or ain’t I?" He lifted his forefoot and patted Festina fondly on the cheek. "You don’t know, my little chickadee, how hard I work to keep the answer ambiguous."
Another Career Step Upward
Festina struggled to her feet, barely managing to stay upright until I lent her my arm for support. "All right," she said to the Pollisand, "now that the Shaddill are out of the way, could you maybe deign to help us? Like finding some way to get our friends out of those…"
With a great gooey slurp, the blobs surrounding Uclod and the rest dissolved into runny gray liquid. It sloshed in sheets to the floor, leaving Lajoolie, Aarhus, and Uclod soaked to the skin but free of their sticky entanglements.
"Well, would you look at that," the Pollisand said in mock surprise. "The Shaddill must have been right about this ship starting to break down — those confinement chambers were in such bad shape, they could only hold together a few minutes." He gave a theatrical sigh. "It’s a bitch when you live on a ship five thousand years old. Things just fall apart."
Festina stared at him. "You’re scary."
"Babe, you don’t know the half of it." Inside the alien’s throat, one of his crimson eyes winked.
"And you couldn’t have arranged for that to happen five minutes earlier?"
"Sorry," the Pollisand said. "Lesser species have to fight their own battles."
Festina grimaced. "Now that the battle’s over, how about arranging for this old decrepit ship to have a breakdown in its master command module? A short circuit that screws up security protocols and makes it possible for us to issue commands without worrying about passwords or voice identification…"
The lights in the room flickered. A raspy voice spoke from the ceiling in my own tongue. "Reporting a major malfunction in security module 13953," the voice said. "Awaiting your orders, Captain."
I looked toward Festina expecting her to answer; but then I remembered she did not speak Shaddill and therefore could not understand what the raspy voice said. "Are you speaking to me?" I asked the ceiling.
"You believe I am the captain?"
"Affirmative. Awaiting orders."
"Uhh… do not repair the security malfunction. I shall give further orders soon."
Festina looked quickly back and forth between the Pollisand and me. "Was that what I think it was?"
"I am now in command of this vessel," I announced. "It seems I am excellently well-suited for a career in the navy: I have gone from communications officer to Explorer to captain in just a few hours."
"Don’t stop yet," Festina muttered. "If we get out of here and bring down the Admiralty, you may end up head of the new High Council."
"If I do," I told her, "I will not forget the little people who helped me along the way." I gave her arm a reassuring pat, but Festina did not look reassured at all.
I Become A True Explorer
Released from their bondage, Uclod and Lajoolie had fallen into one another’s arms… which is to say, Lajoolie was hugging her husband so fiercely his orange skin had darkened several shades. He did not object in the least.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Aarhus sloshed damply toward us, his navy boots going squish-squish-squish. "So," he said, "did we win?"
"The Shaddill no longer exist," the Pollisand answered. "Not as Shaddill anyway."
"In which case," I said, "it is time for you to honor our agreement."
"What agreement?" Festina asked.
"I will explain later," I told her. "It is time for Mr. Pollisand to cure my brain… and if you say the remedy is to turn myself into purple goo, I shall punch you in a manner you will find most painful."
"Yeah, well…" The Pollisand looked down at his forefeet and shuffled in the dirt. "Suppose I told you the remedy was to turn a bit of yourself into purple goo."
"Then I should still punch you very hard."
"Oh come on, darlin’," he said, "it’s the cleanest solution to your problem. Sure, I could toss you onto an operating table and rewire your whole brain… but that’d leave you a completely different person. Certainly not the warm and generous bundle of joy we’ve all come to love."
I narrowed my eyes at him and balled up my fist in a meaningful way.
"On the other hand," he said quickly, "if we just dab some honey on your skin, a tiny patch of you will go transcendent — uplifting just enough of your consciousness to get you past the Tiredness."
"Uplifting her consciousness?" Festina asked. "Sounds like bullshit to me."
The Pollisand growled at her. "Give me a break, Ramos. If you want, I can give a ten-hour lecture on how it’ll release certain hormones to overcome certain other hormones that tend to suppress yet another group of hormones, and blah blah blah. But the long and the short is if she accepts a teeny-tiny-eensy-weensy transformation, it’ll be enough to offset the physiological processes that are gradually deadening her brain. And," he added, winking at me, "it’ll kick in a long-overdue maturation process that the Shaddill artificially repressed. My little girl," sniffle, "will start growing up."
Festina glared at him. "Are you sure this isn’t just a prank for your own amusement? Are you sure, for example, you might not have arranged for a delayed-action cure when you saved her life four years ago? Maybe you implanted a curative something in her brain while you were repairing her broken bones… and you just want to smear her with Blood Honey because you like the idea of making her purple?"
The Pollisand gave a soft chuckle. "I like you, Ramos; I like the way your paranoid mind works. But if I did foresee everything and set up Oar with a brain implant, I’d surely make certain the implant wouldn’t activate until a patch of her glassy-ass skin turned to goo. How else could I consolidate my position as the most annoying creature in the universe?" He turned to me. "I assure you this is necessary if you want to save your brain. A teeny-tiny-eensy-weensy bit of you has to become jelly."
"All right," I said, gritting my teeth. "If that is what I must do…"
"It is," the Pollisand said. He went to the fountain and dipped his toe into the honey. Of course the toe did not turn purple — no doubt Mr. Foul Annoyance had such evolutionarily advanced skin, it did not succumb to the honey in the same way as lesser beings.
"Where do you want it?" he asked, walking back to me on three feet to keep his damp toe from touching anything. "Bottom of your foot so it’s hardly ever visible? The tail of your spine so it’s covered by your jacket? Atop one breast like a purple tattoo?"
I turned to Festina, thinking I might ask her advice… but as soon as I looked at her, I knew what it had to be.
I lifted my finger and pointed to my right cheek. The Pollisand moved before Festina could stop him.